Fryrear said â€œeveryone is created heterosexualâ€ and said many women are gay because theyâ€™re searching for a mother figure or because they have been sexually abused by a man. She said some women are gay because itâ€™s â€œen vogue.â€

[…]

Fryrear, a middle-aged woman originally from Louisville, Ky., said that as a teenager she knew she was a lesbian and â€œclosed her heart to Godâ€ when she read a Bible passage that says, â€œDo not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.â€

â€œI thought God was saying Melissa (Fryrear) was detestable,â€ she said, noting she had her first lesbian relationship at 16.

â€œI was unwilling to resist the draw and the temptation.â€

After college, Fryrear said she began attending church again and stopped her lesbian relationships. She said she and her girlfriend were treated by her church with â€œkindness and friendliness.â€

She said the church decided to take her in just as they have taken in other â€œsinners.â€

Fryrear said Christians should embrace gays by â€œnot just telling them what is wrong, but by inviting them into our family, our church.â€

During a question and answer session, Fryrear appeared to become uncomfortable when a reporter asked her what her sexual orientation is now and if she still has sexual urges for women.

â€œWithout question, Iâ€™m attracted to men, particularly tall men with red hair,â€ said Fryrear with a nervous laugh. â€œDoes an alcoholic ever think about having a drink again? â€¦ Thoughts may come into my mind.â€

All the way from Colorado Springs to Trucksville, Pennsylvania, for this. I guess you’ve got to find things to do with the time a straight woman would use to have sex with men.

The higher a woman’s sex drive, the more she desires men and women, according to a study which says heterosexual women are 27 times more likely than heterosexual men to express attraction to their own sex.

“It’s a common-sense view that heterosexual men with high sex drives are very interested in women, and gay men with high sex drives are super attracted to men,” Lippa said. “The unexpected result of this study is that it suggests that women are more intrinsically bisexual.”

Lippa’s study was published in the January issue of Psychological Science. For the study he polled 3,600 people, mainly California-based college students. Lippa was also involved in a BBC survey of over 200,000 people, which he says bolstered his findings. He says the BBC data and his study’s results do not vary across cultures or age groups.

“These findings suggest that sexual orientation is fundamentally different in men and women,” Lippa said. “It almost seems that in most women, there is a latent bisexuality and that high sex drive energizes it.”

I don’t know if I believe that women are queerer by nature. Women are more likely to act on non-hetero attractions; I’ll go for that.

Engeline de Nysschen and Hanelie Botha, a lesbian couple, have been found guilty of the murder of Botha’s son, reports 365Gay.com‘s South Africa Bureau.

Their trial was told that Engeline de Nysschen beat the boy until he fell into a coma. Her partner, Hanelie Botha, the boy’s birth mother, stood by and did nothing to stop the assault.

The court heard testimony from a woman and daughter who worked for the couple witnessed the attack, describing in detail how Nysschen demanded the toddler call her daddy and when he did not began battering him.

When they were arrested the women told police that the boy had slipped in the bath.

A trauma expert told the court that the boy’s injuries were similar to those of a person who had fallen from a two-storey building.

In handing down a guilty verdict Magistrate Rita Willemse said that while there was no evidence linking Hanelie to the killing she was equally guilty of murder for failing to protect her child against the abuse.

Weast said yesterday he regretted making the videos, but he said he made them about a year ago at a time when he needed the money badly. Still, he said his private life should have no effect on his coaching activities.

In comment on the case, the executive director of a well-known Illinois gay rights groups said private religious schools have a legal right to enforce their own values as long as federal anti-discrimination laws are not violated.

Alderman swears she is not in anyway a celebrity: “My life is not glamorous â€“ I wake up, write three pages of longhand in bed, get dressed, work for a period of time, walk in the parkâ€¦.” She adds that she enjoys watching the TV programme “Masterchef goes Large” â€“ a leisure pastime that is galaxies away from being drunk at the Groucho Club.

With a bit of encouragement, Alderman admits that she is enjoying some aspects of her fame: “I did get recognised in the street once, which was great.

“Also, since this has happened, I have had some offers of interesting writing projects I could be involved with, so I feel very lucky.” She is working on a new book, about a group of friends who meet at Oxford University, where Alderman studied. “Itâ€™s quite a different book, there is a Jewish character but no strong Jewish theme.” She stops in her tracks, in the belief that talking about the plot too much will “jinx it”, meaning that she wonâ€™t be able to get it down on paper if she describes it out loud first.

Alderman would like to write a TV show, but reckons she has “three books queuing up in her mind, waiting to be written”. This queuing process started many years ago, as she began writing a novel while at school. Sadly this was abandoned after three chapters.

“It was about a girl who had magical powers, but once I’d given her the powers, I didnâ€™t manage to work out what she would do with them,” Alderman chuckles.

However, she would never let go of her dream of being a novelist, and was ecstatic after hearing about her publishing deal, because sheâ€™d “wanted to be a writer for 15 years.”

The process of getting Disobedience into print was an unusually smooth one. Between 2003 and 2004 Alderman studied on the famous Creative Writing MA Course at the University of East Anglia (many ex-students have gone on to be successful), and began writing the book during her time there. While she was there she won a short story competition, and the agency running it offered to help her find a publisher. Viking snapped the book up almost immediately after it was finished.

Juliet Wilson, of North London, has been sentenced to three years in jail for pouring boiling bleach on her then-girlfriend, Maxine Grizzle, in October 2005 after she found out Grizzle had met up with an ex-lover.

According to press reports, Grizzle forgave Wilson and wrote a letter to the judge in the case to be lenient on Wilson, who is a mother of two. The letter persuaded the judge to take two years off the woman’s sentence.

The two children are being cared for by Wilson’s brother.

Grizzle told the court that on Oct. 26 she was awakened by “some hot thing over me.” She went to the mirror, and it looked like her face was “coming off.” Grizzle said Wilson refused to help her, so she ran outside and got assistance from a bus driver.

I previously posted about Exodus International claiming that blogger Justin Watt, who blogs at Justinsomnia.org, violated copyright and trademark laws when he posted a parody of their “Gay? Unhappy? www.exodus.to” ad campaign. USA TODAY reported on Thursday that Exodus “is no longer pursuing the matter after Watt stopped using its ‘watermark’ logo.”

Watt, operator of the Justinsomnia blog, says he exercised free speech when he parodied the Exodus billboard, which says, “Gay? Unhappy? www.exodus.to.” Wyatt re-created the billboard on his site so it read, “Straight? Unhappy? www.gay.com.”

(Exodus uses “.to” as its domain suffix because “.com” was not available.)

Watt, 26, a Web developer in Northern California who enlisted the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union and high-powered law firm Fenwick & West, has posted his blog for four years. He posted the parody Sept. 19 because he found Exodus’ message “offensive.” A lawyer representing Exodus sent Watt a cease-and-desist letter on March 2.